<Begin Segment 12>

PW: Now in Sacramento again, your life is very different, you're in a city, your father, you have both the boys that are born now. Your family has a theater, so did you go to the movies a lot?

HS: Yes, yes.

PW: Tell me about that.

HS: That was really, what a difference, right? Yes. We got to see all kinds of movies, and it was like a... it wasn't a first run theater, so there was a change in the movies almost every other day. So we saw every... all kinds of movies. I don't know whether we got the best movies, but we did certainly see the Westerns, Hopalong Cassidy. There were a lot of... there were a lot of movies. Also on every Saturday, there would be an episode of the movie and then they'd keep you hanging, so you'd have to go back next Saturday to see what went on after that. That was kind of fun, you know, people, kids used to go to that. We had a soda fountain and a candy place where you sell candy. And we had a little soda fountain on the side so people could go in and buy milkshakes, or we were making frosty cones at that time, just had come out. So we were getting the cones and frosties would come out. So it was better than farm life.

PW: Did they ever show Japanese films?

HS: I don't think so. The Japanese shows used to, they used to show Japanese shows when a... there would be a man who would bring a huge roll of... at the Buddhist church in Sacramento, they used to show Japanese movies and they were very, very popular. And I think they used to show it almost every Saturday night. There would be a man who would go from here to Fresno, to San Francisco to show the same movie to the audience that would gather. And as I said, it was very popular. My mother-in-law used to say that somebody would call up and say, "So and so needs you at home," so she (as the minister's wife) would have to get her flashlight and look for the person to send him home. So there are little vignettes of things that happened in that time.

PW: Did your family go to the Buddhist Temple regularly?

HS: Yes, we did. I think I ended up becoming a dharma school teacher later on, and I remember the biggest thing that I remember about the church, it's not even about me. My grandfather, my grandmother and grandfather, when they moved to Sacramento, after the war, they didn't stay very long in Linden. They just moved to Sacramento, and they bought into a hotel that was actually upstairs, you had to go up the stairs because there were businesses below. And my grandfather pretty much stayed in his room all the time. But the one thing he did was, on Sundays, he would just trudge down the stairs with his cane and slowly walk all the way to the Buddhist Temple which was only a block, a block away, I think. It was only a block away, but I just remember him walking slowly to the church. So he would go to church every Sunday, and then he would go back, go up the stairs and back to his room, and that was his life.

PW: What was the name of the hotel? And then I also forgot to ask what's the name of the movie theater.

HS: Okay. The name of the hotel is Grand Hotel, Grand Hotel. And there was a grocery store under there, there was a drugstore under there, the business. And I can't recall, there was another business under there, too, but I can't recall what that third business was. We had, there was a doctor, a physician that also had a room in the hotel. And so if you wanted to see Dr. Ito, you'd have to go up and see him in one of the rooms, or maybe he had a double room in the hotel.

PW: And what about the theater?

HS: The theater? The theater's name is Lincoln Theater. And the three partners, you want the names of the partners?

PW: Yeah.

HS: And my father's cousin named Feb, F-E-B, Feb Yokoi. And the third partner is Soichi. Soichi Nakatani.

PW: And these were all kind of in the same, was this all kind of in Japantown part of Sacramento?

HS: Well, Mr. Nakatani, I don't know where he came into some money, but he lived actually in the white area, in the Land Park area. So he actually did not live in the, where most of us lived, in Japantown area. And Feb, where did Feb live? I just don't know. Feb's mother lived in the Grand Hotel. Feb's mother was one of the partners in the Grand Hotel, but Feb himself, I don't know where he lived. But Feb Yokoi was in the 442nd. He went to World War II and he was... he was really special. And when he came to visit us on the farm in Linden, we all looked up to him. [Laughs]

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.